


it is true we shall be monsters (cut off from all the world)

by WhatsATerrarium



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 06:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20652839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatsATerrarium/pseuds/WhatsATerrarium
Summary: "It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless and free from the misery I now feel."--Mary Shelley, FrankensteinORMinkowski and Jacobi meet in a funeral home.





	it is true we shall be monsters (cut off from all the world)

**Author's Note:**

> So, I’ve deleted my old account and am starting over! I’ve orphaned about half of my own works and am re-posting the rest! It was just time for a fresh start!

it’s raining. it’s five o’clock at night and already getting dark, daniel jacobi is leaving the funeral home and of course it’s fucking raining.

it’s been an admittedly hard day. he’s just walked out of a room where a man in a suit asked for money in exchange for two cemetery plots, so that daniel could (metaphorically) bury the two people he never thought he’d live to see the death of, and now he’s getting a glimpse of the wretched weather out the window. the day gets a bit harder when he sees a woman exit the identical office across the hall. he never liked the rain.

it’s been a hard day for this woman as well. she’s just come out of a rather awkward conversation, in which a man in a suit asked for money in exchange for one cemetery plot so that she could (metaphorically) bury a person she hadn’t even liked all too much, but felt indebted to. the man had gently suggested they revisit the deal. it might have had something to do with the way she had completely frozen when he asked for the name of the deceased. she didn’t care for the rain either.

“what are you doing here?” he asks, with a bitterness she’s grown accustomed to.

“the same thing you are,” she replies with an exhaustion they’re both all too familiar with.

“i need a drink,” the murmur escapes his lips quickly, a built in avoidance mechanism, a carefully and subconsciously formulated ‘fuck off’.

“there’s a bar a couple doors down. first round’s on me.”

this is what he loathes about her. they’re not allowed to go their separate ways, not allowed to passively hate each other. they escaped together and now they have to be in this together, all because she roped the others into some deep pact of eternal best buddy-ship, she thinks she can do it to him too.

he loathes other things about her too, but those wounds still feel too fresh. they say to wait till the body is in the ground.

maybe that method would work if there was a body to bury. instead there are three empty plots. one is her guilt, one is his, and one they share.

“alright, fine.”

he’s not going to pass up a free drink.

she was never a fan of this bar. the bartenders were sleazy, the lights flickered, and she swears she saw a rat once, but none of that is of much importance right now.

“so. you’re giving that sorry bastard a funeral?”

“he was a member of my crew.” her reply is hushed and cold. the reminder of her duty to him, to all of them, is almost wake up call. she’s solemn and put-together and nearly ripping herself apart at the seams to hide her fear because that’s who she is. she’s protecting the people she cares about, and not daring to think about tomorrow when she still has today to conquer. she is uncertainty masked with preparation. she’s a leader too afraid, too hurt to lead. she’s a woman who worked her entire life to get somewhere, and who ran out of that somewhere bloody and stinking of regret and trauma.

“besides,” she begins again, features softening oh-so-slightly in a way that only someone who knew her would recognize. “i’m not doing a funeral. we already had one, remember?”

he nods, looking down at his drink, because he’s suddenly not sure of anything. he doesn’t know if he wants to do a funeral or not. they already had one. should he do another one? with flowers and a casket and a hole in the ground and plenty of mourners, friends- (they were each other’s only friends), family- (he’d never met maxwell’s family, did kepler even have a family?)

he feels something drop in his chest, and all of a sudden he’s in over his head. there are no instructions to be disregarded, no one to make clever quips to, no one to assuage the constant anxiety that told him he had no clue what was happening. he’s a pack animal, a creature thriving off loyalty. he drew his strengths from those around him and used it to protect them. this is who he is. he is broken bones never quite healed, he is graffiti mixing on the walls to form something new and beautiful, he is a howl at the moon in harmony with the sounds of nature.

he is a tragedy masked in gunpowder, waiting to self destruct. she is a tragedy masked with a soft but authoritative voice, telling you to look away.

the trick though, is in the lighting of the fuse. as easy as pulling a trigger, as easy as being brave-

the trick though, is in disobeying the order. as easy as being rebellious, as easy as lighting a fuse-

the trick is in sitting quietly, a game of chicken as they down their first drinks, not yet ready to expose themselves entirely. because he knows what a woman brave and curious enough to light a fuse looks like, and she can spot a wolf with a disobedient streak from a mile away.

so now a calculation must be made.

he drinks.

she glances.

he glares.

she drinks.

and now he’s adding an item to the list of reasons they will never be friends. she’s cowering away from the confrontation she initiated, tiptoeing around things she’d rather leave unsaid, but refusing to remain silent.

so now he’s giving himself the upper hand, breaking through the barrier of silence comfortably settling around them like dust,

“you’re not invited.”

“huh?”

and he was right when he assumed the sound of his voice would surprise her more than his words.

“if i do arrange a funeral, you’re not invited.” he takes another drink. “not to alana’s at least.”

she watches his face soften. he isn’t smiling, but he’s relaxing, and that’s all she knows she’ll get, so she shoots back

“well you’re not invited to my funeral either.”

she forgets to mention the hypothetical aspect of it, swept up all too quick by the offer of conversation, dark as the topic may be.

she forgets a lot of things. forgets how to stand upright with the force of gravity binding her to the planet she once yearned to leave. forgets that the man she sees everyday, talks to every day, saves from himself every day, is different now than when they kept the same routine. forgets that the other man she shares her life with doesn’t know how to talk to her the way he used to.

forgets how to breathe sometimes. late nights waking up from visions of doctors and airlocks, doctors and bombs, doctors and guns. a scent of gunpowder in her nose, tears pooling in her eyes, and a warning, ‘look away’, etched all across her body, she forgets.

and the trick is in the denial, because sometimes he’ll pull out his phone, send a text, leave a voicemail, and deny that the number is no longer in service.

and sometimes she’ll force herself to look up at the starry night sky, forcing back the bile that rises in her throat, and deny that she’s ever viewed it from any other perspective.

and they both deny the diagnosis.

turn a blind eye on the four letter acronym in both of their files that he’s too independant and she’s too put together for.

“how do you-”

he watches her bite her tongue, searching for words he knows she’ll never find.

she sets her bottle down, already feeling the impact of the water from the dam she’s about to wreck.

“how do you not care?”

“you’ll have to be more specific.”

“we killed people.” he notices the way her hands start to shake, and he’s almost sure that no one else has.

he noticed the tremors a long time ago.

and he wants to get defensive.

he wants to huff and rant and tell her to get off her high horse because  _ of course he cares _ .

but he has to stop himself.

because at some point, he thinks he forgot to keep caring. if he had kept caring for every dead person he’d left behind him for the eventual greater good, there would be no greater good, just an empty shell of a man too hurt and bloodied and tired to fight for it.

“i don’t know,” he mutters.

“neither do i,” she says it more to herself than to him, a twinge of discomfort in her voice.

she doesn’t like not knowing things.

“would you?” he asks, meeting her eyes for the first time that night. “if you could just… not care.”

“i don’t know,” she looks back at him, accepting the eye contact as a peace offering, as he had intended it. “i… i think i already don’t care.”

his first instinct is anger, and he feels it growing inside of him.

“i- i care about her, i mean… jacobi, i’m always going to regret killing maxwell, but-”

and the shift in emotions, from anger, to a vague sense of pity, to confusion, almost makes his stomach churn. “but?”

“i don’t care about…”

and the look he sees on her face is too distinguishable, it almost hurts.

“who else?”

and it’s almost a relief, that’s the fucked up part. he feels at least a little less atrocious to find out he’s not the only survivor with a greater-than-one kill count.

“cutter.”

“i kind of assumed lovelace got him.”

and the entirely inappropriate smile that passes between them is the most sickening part.

“i’m almost offended by that for some reason.”

“i guess i didn’t think you had two in you.”

“neither did i.”

“well,” he raises his bottle and ignores that her hand still trembles as she does the same, “guess we’re both monsters. here’s to it.”

and if things were the way he wanted them, they’d leave the bar in silence, they’d get into separate cabs going separate places, and the sky would be clear.

but instead, they’re going to walk out, not grinning arm in arm, but not completely indifferent. they’re going to get an uber- the same uber, going to the same place- her place, where he’s still crashing on the couch, and they’re going to brave the rain together.

_ here’s to it. _

**Author's Note:**

> So a big reason why I don't usually leave comments is that it doesn’t feel like a conversation, it feels too definite. So, as opposed to asking you to leave comments (which I do still very much appreciate and will respond to if that’s your thing), I’m going to let you know how to contact me!
> 
> Instagram: whats_a_terrarium  
Discord: whats_a_terrarium#0251  
Tumblr: whats-a-terrarium  
Twitter: whatsaterrarium
> 
> If you have any thoughts, ideas, constructive criticism, or just want to ramble, never hesitate! :)


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